Make Love, Not War
by justyouraveragehuman
Summary: Bella is the daughter of the king's stepbrother, and Edward is set to marry the daughter of the king. After a mix-up, Bella finds herself pretending to be the princess. What happens when her father overthrows the king? Love can't stop a war, can it?
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

It was morning.

Of course it was. Executions were _always_ in the morning; nighttime meant darkness, which meant not seeing the scarlet fountain of bloods spurting from a place where there was once a head, and certainly not seeing the aforementioned head rolling on the floor where it would inevitably stop at the feet of the executioner, its features contorted in a last, awful grimace.

Executions are nothing if not entertaining, right?

This one was different, though. People will flock out by the hundreds to see the execution of a peasant caught stealing from the royal castle, and by the thousands when a lord or lady is caught in infidelity. But when it's the former almost-prince of the kingdom, you can bet your ass that the entire fucking kingdom will show up.

_Why am I doing this?_ I asked myself, as I tried to shove my way to the front of the jeering mob of people. It's his own fault, really. He admitted to it, so he should take the blame. His sister isn't up there, moments away from death. She'll be branded as a traitor, yes, and almost definitely sent into exile, but she'll live. All he needed to do was keep his fucking mouth shut.

But, being the complete masochist I am, I knew that I couldn't just sit there and watch him die. And, alright, maybe it was partially my fault too, whether or not either of us had admitted it. I guess most of it was my fault. Hell, maybe all of it was my fault. So I had to do something. But when I got to the front of the crown to see him, hands bound and on his knees, my throat caught. I couldn't speak.

Had it really been so little time since we had met? One year. More like eleven months, actually. Eleven _fucking_ months, and he was being torn away from me already. And if I just closed my eyes and waited long enough, for a minute, maybe two, he would be dead, and with him, all living proof of the last eleven months would be gone with a shower of blood and a collective gasp from the crowd.

I suppose that a part of me wanted to forget the months that I spent with him. Forget, and move on. My father would become king, and one day, I would rule the kingdom, and no one would ever be the wiser. It would be _so_ easy. In fact, I would probably never have another chance to bury the demons of my past life, where no political enemy or potential suitor could ever find them. But how could I, when the months that I spent with him were the best of my life?

An inner debate raged for what seems like hours, but was most probably seconds as I stood there, holding my breath, eyes closed, completely unable to move or speak. I could feel beads of sweat forming on my forehead and dripping down my back, but my arms were somehow rendered immobile, like someone had strapped me down to a prison wall as a punishment for misbehaving (Been there, done that, all I can say is that you're fucked if you think you can get away with not saying "please" and "thank you" around the palace manners teacher.). I might have well as been a fucking blind peasant, the amount of help I was. No, scratch that, most people would probably rather have the blind peasant on their side. At least he would have been a human being. Not the lying, backstabbing, complete bitch that I had become.

When I opened my eyes, the first things I see were his. They're emerald green, and beautiful. The kind of eyes that you can drown in, and at that moment, they were conveying everything that I could never bring myself to tell him – I love you, I'm proud of you, I would, and will, die for you.

The next few moments were the ones that you only read about in books, where time slows down to almost a standstill. With his left hand, the executioner shoved Edward's head down, and with his right, he brought a huge axe over his neck. I couldn't quite tell from my vantage point, put I was 99% sure that there was dried blood on it. It was just beginning its descent down when I finally found my voice.

"Wait! Stop! If you kill that man, you'll have to kill me too."


	2. Chapter One

**Hi guys! Just for clarification, the majority of the story from this point on should lead up to what happened in the prologue. Also, if you didn't notice, the prologue was in past tense, but I'm more comfortable with writing in present tense, so that's what this fic will be written in from here on out, consistency be screwed. Thanks for understanding!**

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**Chapter One**

"God dammit! What the hell am I supposed to do about this?"

I turn from braiding my hair in front of the dressing cabinet to see Rosalie slamming the door to her room. No shit it's Rosalie. No one else in their right mind would be throwing temper tantrums before the sun rises. Upon realizing that she has my complete attention, she kicks off her silk shoes, and, I kid you not, stomps across the floor and throws herself down on the bed. She's stomped so effectively that I can just make out where her feet fell my the slight indentations in the the red carpet.

I roll my eyes. This is so typical of Rosalie. "What is it this time, Rose? Servants fixed you toast for breakfast when you explicitly asked for pancakes? Order the wrong color silk dress for the ball? Oh, I know! You stubbed your toe on the door frame on your way out!"

She sits up, crosses her arms across her chest, and glares at me. "Actually, _Isabella_, the answer is none of the above. My father," she pauses for dramatic effect, which doesn't quite work with her disheveled hair and childish, pouting lips. "My fucking daddy dearest is forcing me to get _married_. Married! I can't get married."

Oh god. No wonder she's upset. The upcoming ball, which is going to be held in four days, is supposed to be a celebration of her sixteenth birthday, the youngest age at which a child can be legally married. The fact that her father would even bring up such a thing is not only rude, but suggests that Rose is just a political commodity for him to marry away. Why else would he force her into marriage at such a young age?

If it had been anyone else talking to me, I would have done the usual bullshit. You know, sympathizing, being supportive, etcetera. But anyone who's even claimed to know Rose (and is still alive) knows that you don't sympathize with her - somehow, it only makes her even more annoyed.

Which is why I shrug. "Eh, the sky is blue, the grass is green, princesses get married for the benefit of their douchebaggy fathers. What's new?"

"Look, I am six-fucking-teen. Not even, yet, not for four more days!" she yells. "That's too fucking young to get married to someone I've never even met, someone my father deemed to be _worthy_, just because he has a shitload of money and is a pretentious motherfucker. Screw my fucking father, and screw the fucking laws! We all know that they were made by power-hungry old _male_ aristocrats needing a quick lay, anways!"

"Jeez, Rose. Better keep it down. Wouldn't want the king hearing all these new words his daughter has been picking up lately." That's the thing about Rose. She has an amazing profanity filter - when she's around her father, or any of the court aristocrats, for that matter, I've never heard her utter a single cuss word. When she's around me, or a servant who's just screwed up somehow, however - that's a completely different story. She then drops more f-bombs in one minute than most people have said in their entire lives. And I can proudly say that she learned all cuss words she knows from none other than yours truly.

"I'll say whatever the fuck I want, thank you very much. And you wouldn't get it anyways, you're -" With that, she stops abruptly, clapping both her hands to her mouth and glancing at me apologetically.

I roll my eyes, again. (Yeah, about that? Don't think I do it all the time - it's just that the amount of eye rolling increases exponentially in the presence of princesses, entitled brats, and spoiled children. And yes, Rosalie does happen to be all three of those.) "You can say it, you know. It's not like I haven't heard it before. I'm old."

Rosalie grimaces, and smiles sheepishly. "Sorry."

I sigh. "You don't have to be sorry for telling the truth." And she's right. At nineteen, I have to be the oldest unmarried female in the history of our kingdom. And don't get me wrong - it's not like I'm some kind of decrepit hag or something. If you asked me, I'd say that I'm pretty average – brown hair, brown eyes, and average height and weight. My only vanity point, perhaps is my skin, which is unblemished ivory, despite not wearing a veil outside like most other aristocratic women do.

No, the problem is that Rosalie isn't the only one with daddy issues. Unfortunately, my father is her younger stepbrother, which makes us cousins. Or stepcousins, if you really want to get technical. The problem with this is that my father has to suffer through a shitton of accusations on his rumored ambitions for the throne. Since my father is the closest living relative of the king, he would be next in line for the throne, if say, the king was to come upon an unfortunate accident. Of course, the whole lot of it is complete bull - my father would never do anything like that. Even if he did attempt to assassinate the king, his motivation wouldn't be the throne - it would be that his stepbrother had let his assholeness and general fuckery surface one too many times.

Regardless, having an "evil", "traitorous" (note the sarcasm) father is a bigger turnoff than watching your parents do the nasty in front of you. Pretty much no one wants to associate with the king's perceived archenemy, since no one wants to risk angering the king, and consequentially risk the executioner's axe. Like, I might as well have a sign plastered to my forehead that says "unavailable for the next fucking century". I swear, my death certificate will read: _Isabella Marie Swan, died_ _when she spontaneously combusted from sexual frustration_.

So anyways, that's the lowdown on poor, geriatric, _virginal_ Bella.

I laugh though, shrugging it off. "Gosh, you younguns don't know how good you have it," I say, adopting the voice of an elderly chrone. "Why, when I was your age, we didn't have these fancy carriages you have. No, we had walk miles! In the snow!"

I catch the pillow that Rosalie throws at me, and then stick my tongue out at her as she reaches back for another one. And she has a fucking arsenal of them - apparently princesses need at least fifty pillows to get a good night's sleep.

Twenty minutes and a room that looks like a hurricane passed through it later, we collapse on her bed, exhausted and giggling. What can I say? Put me and Rose in the same room for any amount of time, and the maturity level will drop off a fucking cliff.

I roll over on my side. "So... who's the lucky man?"

"Dunno. I didn't actually stick around long enough to find out. My father brought it up in front of several respectable nobles, no less, and then expected me to take it well. I basically told him to fuck off as politely as I could, and then stormed out. Suffice to say that my future husband will be boring, stuck up, and rude."

"So he'll be exactly like you?" I ask, earning me a playful slap to the head.

"Come on, I'm not that bad."

And she isn't, really, not as far as royals go. Which is kind of sad, considering that I'm technically one of them - it's just that no one in the palace has the desire to acknowledge it.

You know that old phrase - keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer? Clearly, the king subscribes to that bullshit, since my father and I were forced to move in to the palace several years ago, shortly after my mother died of the plague. The king claimed that since my mother died when I was so young, I needed to have a new motherly figure in my life. I don't know what everyone else is used to, but if constantly harassing your child about their apparent lack of civility and locking them in the cellar on a routine basis is considered motherly, then yes, I would say the queen did a spectacular job of being a mother figure to me. However, she's been doing a pretty damn bad job of mothering Rosalie, who's been spoiled for pretty much the entirety of her life. But I digress.

After my father and I moved into the castle, my father began work as the head of the internal law enforcement and I became the princess' main lady-in-waiting. We were an odd pair, to be sure. She was young, beautiful, and, having lived her whole life in the palace, knew the nuances and complexities of court life like they had been ingrained in her since birth. (They probably had been - you know, like, I got bedtime stories nightly as a child, and Rose got the laws of the kingdoms recited to her.) I was plain, older, and couldn't curtsey without spraining both ankles and making a fool of myself. While I quickly became her closest confidant, in reality, we were both necessities for each other. I was there for her when she struggled with the history and mathematics taught at court. As intelligent as she was, somehow the drive to excel in her everyday classes was lacking, and I was always there with a homework assignment for her to copy, or a test for her to surreptitiously peek at. And in return, she was there to correct me when I bungled the difference between "your grace" and "your highness" for the umpteenth time or accidentally insulted her cousin's stepsister's uncle's friend, the duchess of some unpronounceable far-away kingdom.

So when I tell Rosalie that she's not that bad, it's the truth. To the rest of the court, I'm just her lady-in-waiting, some inconsequential aristocrat who would be completely worthless if not for her parentage. But to Rosalie, I am her best friend.

"What if he's not too bad, either?" I ask.

"Yeah fucking right," she scoffs. "It's like you said - the sky is blue, the grass is green, and princesses get married to douchebaggy assholes. I bet he's fifty years old, disgusting, fat, and has about twenty children with his dozens of concubines."

I roll my eyes. (See, what did I tell you about eye rolling and Rosalie?) "First, Rose, that is a disgusting visual, and I did _not _need you to draw that out for me. Second, you don't know that! What if he's perfect? What if you end up falling in love?" I giggle. It's kind of funny. I mean, talk about sign of the apocalypse - Bella Swan, perpetual virgin, is giving advice on love.

Rosalie gives me a look that says are-you-crazy-I-am-not-going-to-fall-in-love-with-him, and then says, "are you crazy? I am _not_ going to fall in love with him. I _know_ that he's completely wrong for me."

"How can you say that? You haven't even met the guy!" As soon as the words leave my mouth, I know that I've said something wrong. Rosalie's annoyance slips quickly into something else - a whole slew of emotions. Hurt, longing... and if I didn't know Rosalie so well, I'd even say-

"I can't fucking marry him," she says quietly, her eyes downcast. "Because I love someone else."

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**Hope you guys enjoyed! Please don't expect such frequent updates all the time, though - I'm on Spring Break right now, so all I have to do is relax and procrastinate on an English essay. :)  
**


	3. Chapter Two

**Hi guys. So, as one reviewer pointed out, the amount of profanity in this story clashes largely with what the apparent time period is. However, what I've imagined for this fic is it being set in a fictitious, alternate university type of reality; I felt like putting setting and time constraints on the story could limit what the characters could express. And also, if I had intended this to be, say, medieval England, the characters would be talking like "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo"etc., and I'm assuming that no one really wants to read Shakespeare-esque writing in a casual fic. No offense to Shakespeare, of course, seeing as he's a literary genius (and if you like Shakespeare, I'd also recommend Chaucer and Spenser). So I guess what I'm trying to say is that take this story as if it were set in a medieval period, but with largely more liberal thoughts and ways of life.  
**

**Does Rosalie swear a lot? Yes, but you'll find that the number of "fucks" will decrease drastically when she's not around Bella. As a princess, Rosalie's been pretty confined by society in what she can and cannot do, and swearing is just a way that she lets her more rebellious nature surface when she thinks that she can get away from it.  
**

**I apologize both for any confusion that I've caused, as well as for this annoyingly long author's note. So, on with the story!**

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**Chapter Two**

"Wait - wait, what? You're in what with who?" I ask, stumbling over my words. Why the surprise, you ask? Rosalie's a teenager, sure, and most teenagers fall in love - or lust - with alarming frequency. But Rosalie's not most teenagers. She doesn't love anyone. At least, not since the fiasco three years ago when she confessed her love to our ethics teacher and got him fired (and beheaded, but she doesn't need to know that). No, she keeps up her cold, bitchy exterior. Apparently, I just haven't been perceptive enough to see through it. "I'm sorry, I must have misheard. For some reason, I thought you just said that you're in love with someone."

Rosalie sits up and stares down at her hands, shockingly demure and nervous for someone normally so outspoken. "I - I, um, I met someone."

Holy shit. "So... is he handsome? Rich?" A fleetingly suspicion crosses my mind, and I vocalize it before I think through it. "Wait - you're not pregnant, are you?"

She glares at me. "I can't believe you just said that. Yes, I think he's handsome, and no, he's not rich. And I'm definitely not pregnant. But I don't fucking care about any of that, don't you see? He's - he's a _commoner_, practically a fucking _peasant_, but he loves me for who I am. He doesn't treat me like I'm some kind of fragile doll incapable of doing anything, or becoming anything, like the nobles at court do. And... I - I think I'm in love with him."

I gape at her, at a loss for words. "You're in love with a_ commoner_?" Normally, I would say that I'm pretty open minded in terms of... well, pretty much everything. But nothing good ever comes out of trying to break down social class barriers. " Are you out of your damn mind? What - why? Does he know?"

"Yes, no, and because I fucking can. Because I'm in love. I wouldn't really expect _you_ to understand," she says, her voice bordering on the edge of hysteria. "And, no, of course my father doesn't know. Do you think that I would actually tell him? He'd probably castrate Emmett, and then lock my ass up in prison for the next decade or so."

"I wasn't talking about your father - I was asking if he - Emmett - knows that you're, you know - "

"The princess? No. He doesn't need to know."

I exhale sharply. "So you've built an entire relationship on lies? How the hell did you get away with that? And how long have you been seeing him?"

"About four months. You know those private geography lessons I'm going to? Well... there aren't really any. I borrowed some of your old clothes, and I've been sneaking out of the palace a couple of times a week."

"And no one suspected? Damn Rose, I'm actually pretty impressed. How the hell did you get away with that?"

"Yeah, don't credit my marvelous acting skills or anything," she says with a slight smile. "I'm quite positive that I got out of the palace because of the disgusting clothes you always wear. Seriously, do you own any other color besides shit brown? My initial intent was to convince the palace guards that I was you, but I'm pretty fucking sure that they thought I was a servant."

"I own other colors, you know. And there's absolutely wrong with brown," I say, slightly offended. Brown is pretty, like the earth after the rain.

"Yeah, really? What other colors? Black? White?"

"No - remember that blue dress I wore for you birthday a few years ago?"

Rosalie rolls her eyes. "Only because I forced you to. And that was three years ago - while it may have been floor length back then, you'd probably be showing a good four inches of ankle if you tried it on now. That is, if you could even find it."

"I wasn't finished! There was that one, um... _other_ dress that one time..." I struggle to come up with another example, and then realize something. "Hey, you're trying to change the subject on me!"

"It's not like it would be hard, you know. You're so easily fucking distracted. I could start talking about yesterday's lessons, or the latest court gossip, and you would go off on a fucking tangent for hours."

"Actually, did you hear about that one servant, Jessica? The one who used to wash all the clothes and bedsheets and whatnot. I heard she got fired for sleeping around with some of the court - hey wait!"

Rosalie giggles. "See what I'm talking about?"

I give her my best "you're-ridiculous" face, and roll my eyes. "Haha, _very_ funny. But really, what are you going to do?"

"I - I really don't know. Emmett talks about the most amazing things - like running away and getting married, having children. You know, sometimes I think that he suspects. Not that I'm a princess of course, just that I'm not really a commoner either. But he doesn't ask about it - it's like he trusts me to tell him when I feel comfortable enough to. Being with him is the most amazing thing that's ever happened to me." She trails off with a sigh and a dreamy expression on her face.

"Holy shit, Rose. Are you that serious about this?"

"Dead fucking serious. Don't you see why I can't get married to some random noble my father picked out? I can't. I won't. I won't marry someone that I don't love, not when I've met Emmett."

She's crazy. Rosalie is officially crazy. But telling an enraged and love-struck princess that you are seriously question her sanity is probably no the best way to stay alive, so I attempt to keep my approach relatively neutral. "When are you planning on telling him the truth?"

"My father? Not for a long time, and preferably never. If you're talking about Emmett though - I was planning on telling him that I'm not exactly in the same socioeconomic class as him soon."

"How soon is soon? You're getting married, it what, a month?"

Rosalie, unexpectedly, smiles. "Actually, no. I'm pretty damn positive that my father said something about waiting a year. He's not completely insane, apparently. He wants to give me ample time to get to know my future husband, and for him to send out invites of everyone in the country. Everyone of consequence at least. Can you imagine - all those prissy nobles will show up, and there won't actually be a wedding. I wish I could be there to see the looks on their faces."

"And what do you plan to do for a year, then?"

"Uh, what else? Run off with Emmett before anyone realizes that I'm gone. Weren't you listening?"

"And somehow, you're going to simultaneously convince your suitor, your father, and the whole palace that you have every intention of going through with the wedding. How the hell is that going to work?"

"Do I look like I fucking know, Bella?" she asks, her eyes conveying a mixture of determination and despair. "I - hmm." She stops abruptly, a devious smile forming across her face.

Shit. That's never a good sign. I've seen that smile before - both times when she convinced me to do something completely and totally ridiculous. (The first was the time when I put pins on our former embroidery mistress' seat, and the second when I scaled up one of the palace trees to pick us some apples, resulting in a broken wrist and a severe beating from the queen when she found my tattered dress. It goes without saying that neither had good results.)

I groan and close my eyes. "Just tell me, Rose. What insane plan have you devised, and exactly how will it get me in deep and utter shit?"

"Well... I was thinking," she starts.

"Surprise, surprise."

She glares at me, but continues to talk. "Well, I'll need to spend as much time as possible with Emmett over the next year or so, and I'm also supposed to be meeting with my future 'husband' on a fairly regular basis. And that all has to be on top of all of our classes. There's no way in hell that I can be in two places at once so..."

Crap, crap, crap. I know exactly where this is going. "No way, Rose," I say, shaking my head emphatically . "There is absolutely, positively_ no_ freaking way that I am going to pretend to be you. And you're insane if you think that I'd agree to that."

"You don't even know that was what I was going to say!" she protests. "You wouldn't even let me finish my fucking sentence!"

I pause, and put on a patronizing smile. "Okay, then. What were you going to say before I so rudely interrupted?"

She frowns, a slight crease forming between her eyebrows. "Okay, _fine_. That's exactly what I was going to ask, but -"

"No."

"Just - "

"No."

"Just fucking hear me out, okay! Look, he'll never know that it's you. We're the same height, and roughly the same weight. It'll be easy."

I snort derisively. "Yeah, were the same weight, all right. You just happen to have about ten more pounds in the chest region. And, I don't know if you realize this, but there the small manner of... well - you know. Maybe the fact that our _faces_ look absolutely _nothing _alike!"

"Pssh, don't you think I've though of that? That's actually pretty easily solved. I can arrange for all the meeting between me and my suitor to be in the garden. I always wear a veil outside, so he'll never actually have to see your face."

"Well," I say, hesitantly. "Maybe if you say please."

"Please?"

"No!"

"Come on, Bella! I'll never ask for anything every again. I fucking promise!"

"No Rose, and that's final. I'm not risking my life, or my father's reputation, the little that's left of it, just so that you can play wife to some random peasant boy. I refuse."

Rose gets up from the bed, and walks over to me. I'll never admit it to her, but she's pretty damn terrifying when she's angry. Luckily, I'm generally not on the receiving end of her wrath, but as she puts her face an inch from mine, her eyes spitting fire, I realize that I've never seen her so mad. It takes all of my will power not to shrink back from her.

"The _only_ fucking reason that you're not agreeing, Isabella, is because you've _never_ been in love," she spits out. "Only someone who's never felt love would put something as fucking trivial as _reputation_ before love. It's something that you'll never understand." With that, she turns and storms away as far as the confines of her room allows, sitting down in front of her own dressing cabinet.

I wait to make sure that she isn't about to turn around before I let the first tears fall. If it was just a matter of Rosalie being bitchy, it wouldn't be a problem. It's the fact that what she's accused me of is true that hurts. I've never been in love, and unless my luck changes in the near future, I won't ever experience it. Furthermore, she's right about other things - I should care more about my best friend's future happiness than what little reputation my father has left.

I wipe away my tears, and wait a few moments to compose myself before I start to speak. When I do, it's in a stuttering, cracking voice.

"Alright. I'll do it."

The ensuing squeal that Rosalie makes as she throws herself into my arms is a sound that I previously only thought pigs could make. It also comes with a sense of foreboding and dread.

What the hell have I gotten myself into?

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**Thank you for reading! If anyone is getting tired of Rosalie and Bella, Edward _should_ be making an appearance in the next chapter!**


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